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Chicken Cutlets
498. Cut, in as large pieces as possible, the fleshy parts of a couple of chickens, either cooked or uncooked. Season well with a mixture of pepper, mace, cayenne, and salt, then cover them with egg and bread-crumbs, and fry them a light brown. They should be served in a thickened and well-seasoned gravy, made from the bones, with the heads and legs of the chickens.
A STEWED HOWTOWDIE WITH DRAPPIT EGGS. (Meg Dods.) 499. Prepare and stuff with forcemeat a young, plump fowl. Put it into a yetling concave-bottomed small pot, with a close-fitting lid, with button-onions, spices, and at least a quarter of a pound of butter. Add herbs if approved. When the fowl has hardened and been turned, add half a pint, or rather more, of boiling water, or broth. Fit on the lid very close, and set the pot over embers. An hour will do a small fowl, and so in proportion. Have a little seasoned gravy, in which parboil the liver.
A Victorian way with the breast and thigh meat of two birds: seasoned, crumbed, fried, and served in a gravy built from the carcasses. The instructions assume a cook who is jointing whole chickens and has stock-making as second nature.
- What a "cutlet" means hereThe recipe asks only for the fleshy parts cut in as large pieces as possible, so breasts and boned thighs rather than chops on the bone. If you want the crumb coating and the meat to finish at the same moment, keeping the pieces to a fairly even thickness helps, though the recipe itself does not call for flattening.
- Cooked or uncookedThe recipe allows either, and the difference matters for timing. Raw cutlets of even thickness need roughly three to four minutes a side in shallow fat to reach 165F at the centre; already-cooked meat only needs the crust coloured, a minute or two a side.
- MaceThe lacy outer covering of nutmeg, sold ground or in blades. It is warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself; about a quarter teaspoon ground, with a good pinch of cayenne, is enough for two birds' worth of meat.
- Coating"Cover them with egg and bread-crumbs" means beaten egg then dry crumbs. Flour first, then egg, then crumbs, if you want the coating to stay put; a period cook would have used stale bread grated by hand rather than anything from a packet.
- Heads and legsThe gravy is made from the bones together with the heads and legs; since the fleshy parts have gone into the cutlets, "legs" here most likely means the scaly feet, which are rich in gelatine and give the sauce body. Chicken feet are still sold in Asian and Caribbean markets; wings and backs will stand in, though the result is thinner.
- Frying fat"A light brown" is easier to hit in a shallow pan with about half an inch of fat at 350-360F. Clarified butter, lard or dripping suits the period; drain on paper and sauce at the table so the crust does not soften.
- YieldTwo chickens give eight to ten cutlets, enough for four to six as a main course with the gravy and a plain vegetable.
Cutlets of this sort belong to the repertoire of made dishes, in which the prime meat of a bird was lifted off, treated like a veal escalope, and the remainder turned into the sauce that dressed it. Little was wasted: heads and feet, discarded in most modern kitchens, were valued for the gelatine they contribute to a gravy. The seasoning here -- mace with cayenne -- is in the older English idiom rather than the French sauce vocabulary of later nineteenth-century writing, and the recipe assumes a household that can put two whole chickens into a single dish.